Secret Lovers (Nixon/conservatives)

[marmar]

From ourfuture.org:


Secret Lovers
Submitted by Rick Perlstein on July 31, 2007 - 4:38pm.

In my somewhat notorious speech "'I didn't like Nixon until Watergate': The Conservative Movement Now," I made the argument that whenever the Nixon White House wanted something illegal, unethical, or underhanded to be accomplished obediently and without question, they turned to the adminsitration's self-described conservatives—and that this reveals the essence of conservative "principle": means-justifies-the-ends thinking in the service of destroying designated "liberal" enemies.

The latest documents released by the Nixon Library enrich my case.

There's this one, from April 15, 1971, from Haldeman aide Gordon Strachan (all links pdf):

Magruder suggests we assign an investigating reporter to do in-depth background research on Kennedy. It is Magruder's view that very damaging, and later very useful, information could be developed in this manner.

He suggests that we have the activity set up through Nofziger.

An alternative would be to have Chapin arrange it through Victor Lasky.

The first name, Lyn Nofziger, was Governor Reagan, and then President Reagan's, press secretary. He was convicted—the conviction was later overturned—for illegal inside lobbying for a defense contractor; I'm sure you can read about it in his memoir, published by fair-and-balanced Regnery. Bill Boyarsky, in his early Reagan biography, reports that little Lynnie ratted out one of his high school teachers to the state legislature's joint fact-finding committee on un-American Activities for being "always on the side of the left."

The second figure, Victor Lasky, was a kind of early-issue Ann Coulter, a right-wing hack author who, wouldn't you know it, came out with that modern (and wildly distorted) classic of two-wrongs-make-a-rightism It Didn't Start With Watergate (1978). I didn't realize until now it was meant to be self-exculpetory.

In a "SENSITIVE--EYES ONLY" document from that October, Richard V. Allen proposes investigating some cock-and-bull story of Ted Kennedy's supposed ownership interest in the Toyota distributorship in New England. Handy! "At a minimum, it could be suggested that the Japanese are involved with Kennedy funding." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/secret_lovers?tx=3